Cortana Ask Me Anything not working

Has anyone got an issue with the Cortana search 'Ask me anything'? Suddenly on both my machines I notice this morning I will type something like 'Reliability History' and it will display the usual results. But then if I do it again I get nothing.

I have to log out and back in to get it to work again but it'll only work the once. If I type a second search the blank list returns. It's as if it is linked with an MS server that is either down or working really slowly. I'd say it was a PC issue if not for the fact that both our machines are suddenly displaying the exact same behaviour at the same time which makes me wonder if it's an issue on MS end. Neither PC has undergone any significant changes of late other than the usual frequent windows defender updates and the latest Office 365 updates on Thursday evening. I checked all user accounts on both machines and same issue on all of them. I cannot say for certain when this started happening but I only spotted it this morning - I use the ask me anything / search quite a lot so I suspect it's very recent

Yep, having the same issue suddenly. I notice that once I restart, search works the first time, but if I select one of the results, it doesn't work again. Restarting the Cortana process allows it to work again, but only once again.

Odd, I didn't see any update today.

I hate having a connected OS...

Edit 2: according to reddit users, blocking cortana in firewall makes things work again. So yes, cortana is pinging the web for local searches.

Edit: Looks like a widespread issue, did MS stealth push an update? Or is my PC pinging their servers everytime I search locally on my PC?!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/5mitr7/windows_search_stops_working_after_being_used_1/

Typical MS - why does a search of ones own local pc rely on ms servers. This is what I dislike about things being so heavily cloud reliant. You are at their mercy. Naturally MS haven't made a murmur. I see tons of posts on their ms answers forum plus a shed load of tweets

Yep, hoping this forces a lot of people to disable the outbound rule for Cortana. That'll learn Microsoft.